Tag Archives: openness

I’m in the midst of a bit of travelling at the moment, currently in BC, where the weather is just beaming down goodness upon us.

This post started the minute I got on the airplane. I was headed to seat 11A only to find out that in fact it was already being sat in. So what does a red-headed adventurer do? Well since I’m usually the last one on the airplane anyway, I just went and sat in another seat – 11D, which dammit, turned out to be someone else’s seat. This lady came after me, I mean come on I’m always the last one on the plane. Well there was another option – 11E was free. I scooted my butt over to the middle seat, jesus how I hated the middle seat, what a shitty seat (stupid friggin’ first world problem – right? I mean soon I would be soaring through the clouds like a goddamn bird.)

Fast forward a little and now I’m chatting with the 2 ladies on either side of me. To my left is Candace and to my right is Janice. Janice was on her way home to Vancouver and Candace was on her way to visit her son. We all chatted for quite some time about all kinds of things that just didn’t matter to anyone, oh the joys of small talk. Then of course the conversation, as always, inevitably turned to what do you do for a living? Funny how that comes up a lot.

The best part though was that as we chatted more and more Candace shared with us this really great story about the digital divide and about missing chances to talk to human beings. Candace began telling us about a book that she was reading about digital distractions. The entire story was pretty funny because at the end of the story the punchline was that in fact she had got on this very plane without that book because she was interrupted from reading it by the ring of her cell phone, Candace put down the book to look at her phone and then was in a rush to load onto the plane, thus leaving her book about how we are being distracted by digital media in the airport lounge. Ironic much?

A small story but a rather funny story and one that happens pretty much all the time in one way or another.

I’m happy she left her book in the lounge and I’m happy you have to turn your cell phones off while you’re on an airplane. It gave me a chance to really chat with 2 other human beings that I otherwise probably would have never met.

I got to learn their stories and one of them, Candace, and I found out that we are both very much creatives and in fact Candace’s entire family is creative – movie director, writers, painters, etc….

By the end of the plane ride I had found out that one of her sons was a stand up comedian so I asked her if her son would be performing while I was in Vancouver. He was, but I couldn’t make it unfortunately. We did want to chat more though, so I ended up meeting her and her son a few days later over a really great brunch.

You just never know when you will run into someone that might be extremely interesting, that could be good for business, or might just turn out to be a friend. In this case, I think I hit the jackpot. Who was this woman? Who was this family? We really could have spent all day talking about the creative industry and our work.

I was open to having a discussion, open to listening, open to learning, and in the end Candace and her family have hired Creativision to help them examine ways to garner attention as well as to strategically grow their various creative pursuits.

Next time you get on a plane, on a bus, are sitting alone at the bar, don’t be afraid to be open – human beings, for the most part are pretty awesome people. (I didn’t even tell you about the amazing chat I had with a really wonderful law student I had on my first flight).

***ok so I was about to post this and then I found this crazy little video about a few things but underlying it was the ability to be open and to start small talk and since I thought it was amusing of course you will too, right?